The first major poet of the Hebrew literary renaissance of Moslem Spain, Shmuel Ben Yosef Ha-Levi HaNagid was also the prime minister of the Moslem state of Granada, battlefield commander of the non-Jewish Granadan army, and one of the leading religious figures in a medieval Jewish world that stretched from Audalusia to Baghdad.

Preface Introduction An Andalusian Chronology On Fleeing His City The Miracle at Sea A Curse The Apple Jasmine The Gazelle The Fawn Where's That Coy Gazelle In Fact I Love That Fawn I'll Show You a Fawn They Stole My Sleep His Brother's Illness On the Death of Isaac, His Brother The Friends The House of Prayer The Critique The Pain What Are These A Day of Distress The Victory Over Seville The Dream The War with Yadir On Lifting the Siege Your Manuscript Shines To Yehosef, His Son Pass of Sand Among My Friends Rise Early Your Years Are Sleep Sad Friend How I Helped the Wise Rouge in Appearance Take the Crystal Truth Is Hard When the Lord Is with You One Who Works and Buys Himself Books How Could You Loathe Forgive the Man Who Sinned Against You If You're Finding the Good at Fault Delay Your Speech I'd Suck Bitter Poison from the Viper's Mouth If You Don't Have the Power to Pay He Who Lingers at the Court of the King In Business Don't Get Involved If You Shame a Man People Welcome the Rich He Whose Heart in His Heart If You Leave a Long-Loved Friend Respect and Discretion The Rich Are Small You Who'd Be Wise When You're Desperate It's Heart that Discerns Stab Your Heart Is There Any Frustration Did Your Father Leave You Glory Could Kings Right a People Gone Bad The King He'll Bring You Trouble The Wise Understand Assistants Come to Judgment in Groups The Good Students Tend What's Familiar Is Sometimes Distanced The Heart Holds Hidden Knowledge First War Soar, Don't Settle Commerce Has Markets Three Things The Foolish Enemy's Face Tells All Man's Wisdom Is in What He Writes Gazing Through the Night Lovers of Life The Multiple Troubles of Man Be Glad, She Said Earth to Man Your Loved Ones Depress You Soul Opens Inside You The Child at One or Two Fear Five to the Power of Five I Quartered the Troops for the Night Why Repeat the Sins Time Defies and Betrays the Patricians You Felt the Fear of Death Why Should the Hearts of You Purists Luxuries Ease You're Trapped, My Tongue Friends, a Fence Surrounds Us Youth Brings Us He Who Depends on the Princes On Their Couches Stretched Out at the Treasury Come Up and See the Court Suffer the World The Market Flutter or Rest See the Fraud Flow By The Earthquake Two Eclipses The Tyrant Who Rules the Homeless and Poor My Spirit The Black of My Hair Ask the Dead and They'll Tell You Send the Lord to the People Cast Your Bread Know of the Limbs You Mock Me Now in Your Youth You Think There's No Hell That Will Hold You You Look Through Open Eyes Everything Hidden Notes Bibliography

Winner of the 1998 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize, Modern Language Association Peter Cole, Winner of a 2010 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters "...a wonder of poetic alchemy. [Cole's] deftly cadenced translations embody, as Pound demanded, 'trace of that power which implies the man'. They are delicately poised between fidelity to the Hebrew and an ear finely-tuned to the possibilities of a modern, poetic idiom in English ... At last HaNagid's gift resonates for the English reader."--Poetry Nation Review (England) "Cole's vigorous inventive translation is equal to the task of rendering the work of a poet whose range encompassed commerce and God, war and wine. HaNagid emerges as a man of identifiably modern--even enlightened--breadth, even as the rest of Europe languished in its Dark Ages."--Publishers Weekly "Thanks to [Cole's] Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid and Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, those of us who don't know Hebrew can, for the first time, hear why HaNagid and Ibn Gabirol have been revered for centuries."--Eliot Weinberger, Lingua Franca "Taut, light-footed translations ... remarkable in the degree to which they carry over the distinct poetic complexities of the original while retaining a crisp, contemporary sense of American poetics ... the quality of motion and emotion comes through directly."--Village Voice Literary Supplement "... magnificent ... offers a comprehensive and rich selection of HaNagid's poems ... Cole has paid close attention to the rhythm and syntax of the Hebrew distich, and he reconstructs them with exemplary grace in his English lines. In the quatrains and shorter poems he incorporates a scattering of full rhyme, though always with a light touch, and in some poems he introduces surprising ruptures and daring enjambments into the syntactic flow, imparting a resilience and tension to the text that were missing in the work of his predecessors."--Ha'aretz (Israel) "[Cole's HaNagid] represents the admission of the Hebrew Golden Age into the world of general literature. And high time, too."--Commentary "Fresh, worldly, intimate, and wise ... supple, and sensitive translations."--Booklist "Samuel the Nagid astonishes as a personality, and when read does not disappoint. Cole's generous offering of verse translations brings to the English reader the full range of the Nagid's poetry: accounts of the terrors and exultations of war; poems about love and lovely, frail pleasures; poems of grief; considerations of mortality ... and snappy epigrams on society and the human condition ... a fine, breathing, contemporary version of an old master."--Prooftexts "Translating HaNagid is an immense challenge ... yet Cole, a Jerusalem poet, meets the challenge. The poems are melodic with the music of English ... The images are fresh without being anachronistic. Excellent notes explain not only the Biblical, but the Arabic borrowings."--The Jerusalem Report "Cole has condensed enormous learning into a tightly composed and subtly informing format."--The Jerusalem Post "Entertainingly complex, intriguingly foreign, and strikingly human."--The Forward "Cole ... brings to this work his exquisite sensitivity to matters of art and Judaism. The poems are delightful and significant still, across the ages."--Conservative Judaism "I do not believe that the miracle of ... Hebrew rebirth in Andalusia could find a more attractive English version today."--Zvi Yagendorf, Ariel "Excellent."--American Poet